Conventional roughness-resistance relationships developed for pipe and open-channel flows cannot accurately describe shallow overland flows over natural rough surfaces. This paper develops a new field methodology combining terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and overland flow simulation to provide a high-resolution dataset of surface roughness and overland flow hydraulics as simulated on natural bare soil surfaces. This method permits a close examination of the factors controlling flow velocity and a re-evaluation of the relationship between surface roughness and flow resistance. The aggregate effect of flow dynamics, infiltration and depression storage on retarding the passage of water over a surface is important where runoff-generating areas are distant from well-defined channels. Experiments to separate these effects show that this 'effective resistance' is dominated by surface roughness. Eight measurements of surface roughness are found to be related to flow resistance: standard deviation of elevations, inundation ratio, pit density (measured both perpendicular and parallel to the flow direction), slope, median depth, skewness of the depth distribution and frontal area. Hillslope position is found to affect the significant roughness measures. In contrast, infiltration rate has little effect on the velocity of water fronts advancing over the soil surfaces examined here and the effect of depression storage is limited. Overland flow resistance is depth dependent where complex microtopographic structures are progressively inundated. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.